Designer

Luigi Colani

Luigi Colani’s real name was Lutz Colani and he was born in Berlin on August 2, 1928. Colani represented what is generally understood by the term visionary. When people hear the name Luigi Colani, they automatically think of an Italian designer, but Colani has nothing to do with Italy: Luigi Colani was born as the son of a Swiss set designer with Kurdish roots and a Polish mother. He grew up in Berlin, and that is where he also studied sculpture and painting at the University of Fine Arts.

In fact, in 1949, Colani was driven abroad, however not to Italy but to Paris, to the Sorbonne, where he studied aerodynamics until 1953. In the following years Colani worked for aircraft manufacturers in California and as a designer of plastic car bodies for the automotive industry in France. In 1955, Luigi Colani was drawn back to Berlin where he started to design furniture and other articles of daily use in the 1960s.

Some of Luigi Colani´s designs have a strangely futuristic appearance and seem to be one step ahead of their time. Colani himself said: “As long as the big-mouths in the leading positions claim that they want progress, but actually only administer the estate and carry along a big bubble, the future of Germany will remain a huge balloon. These conformists are still building the cars of the second millennium and have not yet realized that we are already sitting in the middle of the third millennium.”

Also Luigi Colani´s furniture designs are aerodynamically well-thought out: soft, organic forms which always appear streamlined and modern have made Luigi Colani one of the most famous designers of present times.